


north is everywhere.

by owlinaminor



Series: author's favorites [14]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Character Study, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Strong Female Characters, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4603302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t that Kiyoko’s goal shifts from becoming a doctor to coaching volleyball – if anything, her will to follow through on that dream gets stronger.  She wants to go to a top medical school, but she also wants to love her life with a violent passion, the way Hinata and Kageyama love volleyball.  She wants to support her friends solidly and steadily, the way Daichi and Nishinoya receive serves.  She wants to encourage everyone around her, the way Suga and Tanaka cheer on their teammates.  She wants to never give up, the way the Karasuno volleyball team never admits defeat until the ball has hit the ground for the last time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	north is everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> [shouts from the rooftops] shimizu kiyoko is an aro ace goddess!!!! fight me!!!!!!!!
> 
> the title of the fic and the quotation at the end are from [cartography,](https://books.google.com/books?id=9goYBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=diane+di+prima+cartography&source=bl&ots=w7JCJkukq2&sig=REvG9X4ErFAi8h9cPj6nv1oARfM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwA2oVChMIjI6z6vCKxwIVho4NCh2ZKwgl#v=onepage&q=diane%20di%20prima%20cartography&f=false) a diane di prima poem.
> 
> warning: this fic contains descriptions of minor verbal sexual harrassment. if that makes you uncomfortable, you can skip from “For the sake of the team” to “Two months into the year”.
> 
> thanks goes to the lovely [belle](http://belles.co.vu/) for her proof-reading and cheerleading.

> “I know my value.” – Agent Peggy Carter

 It starts out as nothing but an extracurricular.

Kiyoko schedules a meeting with her guidance counselor in the first week of her first-year in high school.  She tells him, not wasting any time, that she aims to get into one of the top universities in Japan, and she wants to start working hard now to achieve that goal.

Her counselor looks back at her – at this fourteen-year-old girl with the stare of a wizened grandmother – as though either he can’t believe what he’s hearing, he wants to adopt her, or both.  After a long moment of her unwavering stare, he looks away and coughs.

“Okay,” he says.  “Let me see what I can do.”

Kiyoko waits patiently, hands clasped in front of her on the desk, as her counselor shuffles around in his desk, eventually pulling out a file.  He peers through at transcripts from middle school, copies of essays, and early career plans.

“So, you’re aiming for medical school?” he asks.  He smiles, aiming for friendly.

Kiyoko simply nods.

The smile falls off the counselor’s face as he shuffles through the papers one more time, then returns them to the file.  “Well, you’re certainly on the right track.  Great grades, intelligent writing, second place in the regional biology competition for your year – if you keep up your studies and don’t lose focus, you’ll certainly be on the right track.”

Kiyoko nods again.  If her counselor was expecting a more enthusiastic reaction, he hides it.

“However ...” He trails off.

Kiyoko leans forward, sharp blue eyes inquiring wordlessly from behind rectangular glasses.

“Many of the top schools in Japan have recently become more Western in their acceptance policies.  They want to accept what they call ‘well-rounded students’ – students who excel in multiple areas.  You might want to consider joining a club or showing interest in some other area.”

Kiyoko considers his words for a moment, then asks, “Which club do you suggest I join?”

“Something that interests you,” he replies.

“My interest is to get into a good school,” she says simply.

“Then, you could ... You could, perhaps, be the manager for a sports team,” the counselor suggests.  “You wouldn’t need to actually play the sport, only help the coach and assist with scheduling, organizing, whatever the team needs.  It would show colleges that you have varied interests, and that you know how to cooperate with a team.  And, who knows, you might enjoy it.”

Kiyoko looks at him, her expression unchanging, for a long moment.  He feels sweat start to pool on the back of his neck.

Finally, after what seems like hours, she nods.  “Okay.  Which teams need managers?”

The counselor holds up his index finger, indicating that this will just take a second, then opens up his computer and searches his email.  It isn’t long before he locates the message he was looking for, and he says, “Looks like most teams are already set – all of them have at least one upperclassmen or a new recruit, except for one.  The boys’ volleyball club.”

“I’ll do it.”

Kiyoko’s counselor glances at her over the top of his computer.  “Are you sure?  It’s a pretty big commitment, you might want to think over your options first –”

“But it will look good to colleges, and I can participate without having to play the sport,” Kiyoko interrupts.

“Well, yes,” the counselor admits, “but –”

“I’ll do it.  Please email the team’s coach that I will meet with him after school today.”

And without another word, Kiyoko gets up and walks out of the office, her uniform shoes clicking on the polished floor.  Her counselor stares after her, half wishing that all of his students were like her and half wishing that he never has another student like her again.

* * *

That day after school, Kiyoko finds the volleyball team’s coach in the sports workroom.  Ukai is old, but hardened, as though age has sharpened the lines of his face and personality.

Kiyoko introduces herself and explains why she’s there.  She bows low, respectful, and waits for instruction.

“What do you know about volleyball?” Ukai asks her.

“I’m at the top of my class, I work hard, and I learn quickly,” Kiyoko replies.

The coach stares at her for a second, then repeats, “What do you know about volleyball?”

Kiyoko ducks her head, her cheeks tinged light pink.  “Very little.”

“Then learn something, and come to practice tomorrow,” Ukai tells her simply.  “We practice in the second gym, before school at seven and after school at four.”

That night, after finishing her literature reading and her physics problem set, Kiyoko goes on the internet and researches volleyball.  She reads historical articles, makes flashcards on the different positions and terms, and watches videos of old games until she falls asleep in front of her computer.  Then, the next morning, she studies, flipping through her flashcards between bites of rice.  She’s determined to be ready.

She isn’t ready.

The gymnasium is huge, loud, and mildly terrifying.  It’s full of guys shouting at each other, balls hitting against the floor, high fives slapping, Coach Ukai barking out commands.  All of the team members are so full of energy, jumping up and down and running across the gym, and Kiyoko feels completely out of pace with her textbooks and her neatly pressed uniform.

It’s not long before a few of the guys notice her, and not long after that before they start shouting about how exciting it is to have a female manager.  Gushing over how pretty she is.  Speculating whether any of them have a chance with her.  Talking about her as though she isn’t standing right there.

Luckily, Ukai shuts them up, but she can still feel their eyes on her, wondering not about her mind or her determination but what her butt might look like beneath her skirt.

“Boys, this is our new manager, Shimizu Kiyoko,” Ukai announces.  “She’s a first-year, class one-A, and our new manager.  Hopefully she’ll be helping us out for the next couple of years.”

Ukai looks over at Kiyoko.  She quickly bows to the team, and says, “I don’t know a lot about volleyball, but I will try my best to do whatever I can to help your team.”

Her short speech is, unsurprisingly, followed by whispers of, “Oh, she’s so cute!” and “She’s blushing, that’s adorable!”  Kiyoko grits her teeth, staring past them.  She hopes that if she ignores the whispering, it will stop.  (It doesn’t.)

For the next hour or so, they run drills.  Kiyoko takes down notes of how many times different players hit the ball, which players are best at which moves, and anything else she thinks might be useful.  This isn’t bad, so far – it’s just observing and learning, both activities at which she excels.

But then, Ukai asks her to help out with something.  He wants all of the guys to take turns practicing their spiking one after another, and to do that, they need two people to bump and set.

“You can bump, right?” Ukai says, watching the team line up at the net.

Kiyoko nods.  She studied this – she knows what a bump is, how high the ball should go, which direction.  She’s never practiced it with an actual volleyball, but the intellectual knowledge should be enough, she thinks.

The intellectual knowledge is nothing.  She tosses the first volleyball up, but it goes too high, and her hands completely miss it.  The next one, she hits with the wrong part of her forearm, and it flies across the gym.  The third one, she hits too lightly, and it falls directly at her feet.  Kiyoko has studied this, but her hands don’t know how to form the right shape, her arms don’t know how much force to use – this takes instinct and reflexes, and Kiyoko has neither.

After her fifth attempt, she starts to hear laughter.  The guys are turning around in their line, pointing at her and exclaiming how cute her incompetence is.  Her face is burning, and her blood is boiling with _failure, failure, failure._

Ukai doesn’t say anything.  He just motions for one of the upperclassmen to take Kiyoko’s position.  Still, his disappointment is almost worse than the teasing.

Kiyoko walks home after that, hands balled into fists and, for the first time in years, something on her mind besides schoolwork.  _Failure, failure, failure.  Unacceptable._

That night, in between quizzing herself on English vocabulary, she takes a foam ball and hits it up into the air, practicing and practicing until she can do it right.  _Won’t actually need to play volleyball_ , her guidance counselor said.  _Right._

She doesn’t have to play volleyball, but she wants the respect of Coach Ukai and the guys in the club.  She wants to be admired for more than just her face and her figure.

* * *

Within a few weeks, volleyball becomes as much a part of Kiyoko’s life as studying or sleeping.

She practices bumping and setting until she can help with any drill.  She learns strategies, offensive plays and defensive and how to fight when the other team does something unexpected.  She gets to know the guys on the team, not only their names and faces but their strengths and weaknesses, and how they move during games.  She soon has notebooks full of charts on different statistics, detailed play-by-plays of matches, and lists of ways to combat different teams.  Coach Ukai and the current captain (a third-year and Karasuno’s ace, tall and strong but with a shoulder injury that threatens to bench him if he works too hard) haven’t asked her to join their strategizing sessions yet, but they will soon, she’s sure of it.

Kiyoko doesn’t like volleyball, exactly.  It’s not as interesting as groundbreaking discoveries in biology or the newest book from her favorite author.  But there’s still something fascinating about the sport, all the complex planning that can go into just a few seconds of a game.  And there’s something undeniably satisfying about getting better, both Kiyoko herself and the team as a whole.

She feels a rush of pride every time she manages to hit a ball correctly and that – that doesn’t fade, even the tenth or twentieth or hundredth time.  She throws, and she tosses, and she even receives a serve once – admittedly because she was standing on the sidelines when one of the first-years’ practice serves went far out, but it’s still something.

And yet, even as Kiyoko learns more about volleyball than she ever thought there was to know, the respect her teammates have for her doesn’t change.  It’s frustrating, more frustrating than any difficult exam question.  She’s good at volleyball.  She’s no ace, certainly, but she tries her best, and she goes above and beyond her duties as manager – and the guys still see her as a pair of legs and a chest.

Kiyoko decides, two months into the school year, that she can’t change the mentalities of the boys she works with, so she might as well not bother.  They aren’t openly harassing her, just giving her unwanted compliments.  It could be worse.  And she has better things to worry about.

Better things – namely, her schoolwork.

Because as much as she might love the complex strategies of this odd sport, as much as the team might start to rely on her, this is still just an extracurricular.  Grades, college, medical school – still first priority.  And Kiyoko knows that dream will slip through her fingers with every hour spent in Karasuno’s second gym instead of at her desk.

This club runs every day for a couple hours, sometimes in the morning before school, and she needs to maintain her class rank somehow.  No university is going to accept, _Oh, my grades dropped because I was watching a bunch of guys exhaust themselves leaping after tosses._   Emboldened by that rationale, Kiyoko brings her homework to practice.

She walks in every afternoon with her backpack on her back, full with textbooks, notebooks, and index cards.  And whenever she has the tiniest fraction of free time, she studies.  She reads Japanese literature while Coach Ukai holds meetings, pulls out flashcards in between drills, tackles physics problems while the team does yet another round of receive practice – whatever she can to get her work done.

Kiyoko’s always been good at multitasking, and she doesn’t let her homework distract her from her duties as manager, but she still gets the feeling that it pisses Coach Ukai off.  After all, none of the guys are brining books to practice.  (None of them would dare.)  She tries to be careful, for his sake – tries to glance at him every few minutes and put her things away if his face has grown too stern.

Still, a few months into the school year, he pulls her aside after she doesn’t listen to a single word of his speech in the after-practice meeting.

“What does volleyball mean to you?” he asks her, twin fires burning in his eyes.

Kiyoko shrugs.  “It’s a club.”

“Is that really all this means to you?” Ukai demands.  His voice grows quiet, but that’s somehow ten times as terrifying as if he was shouting.  “Just a _club_?  You don’t see the importance it holds for these guys?”

“I do.”

“Then why do you prioritize your homework above this?”

Kiyoko meets her coach’s gaze evenly, ignoring the tingling of her spine.  It feels like she’s staring down an angry mother bear.  “I’m not like ‘these guys.’  I don’t have a future in volleyball.  My goal is to go to a top university, then medical school, and become a doctor, and I can’t do that if I have good grades.  Good grades take a lot of work, and – well, I don’t know about you, but I do like having time to _sleep_ once I get home from practice.”

Coach Ukai opens his mouth to retaliate, but Kiyoko isn’t done.  “Look,” she tells him, “I’ve helped this team.  I pay attention during practices and during games.  I see where improvements are needed, and I help to make those improvements happen.  So what if I care more about my grade in biology than about this club?  With all due respect, sensei, do you think you can find another manager who will be as good at this job as I am?  If you do, you can take me out of the club.  But if not, please allow me to continue studying when I have free moments.”

Ukai gives her the same stare he uses on the first-years when they’re being immature, or on the second-years when they say they want to give up during a particularly hard practice.  It’s a _one more round_ stare, a _don’t you dare_ stare, a _you will do as I tell you_ stare.

Kiyoko stares right back – eyes unblinking, mouth a hard, determined line.

After a long moment, Ukai looks away and sighs.  “Fine,” he says.  “Just do your job.”

Kiyoko nods obediently.  “Thank you.”

* * *

A few weeks later, after practice, Sugawara approaches her.

He’s a first-year, in the same class as Kiyoko, and a setter – not skilled enough to be in the starting line-up yet, but he works hard.  And from what she’s seen of him in class, he works hard there, too, unafraid to raise his hand if he has a question or ask for extra problems in subjects he’s struggling with.  He’s dedicated, Kiyoko thinks – but right now, he seems more nervous, running a hand through his light hair and bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet.

“Hey, um, Shimizu-san,” he says.

Kiyoko steels herself, ready to face teasing or, worse, an unwanted confession.

But what follows, instead, is, “Look, I know you’re – you’re good at biology, right?”

Kiyoko nods.  “I am.”

“Well, I’ve been having a lot of trouble with it this semester,” Sugawara goes on, “so I was wondering if you could help tutor me?  Maybe?  Explain the Carbon Cycle or something?”

For a second, Kiyoko just stares at him.  In response, Sugawara gives her an awkward smile, one that seems almost too big for his face, and starts babbling about organic chemistry.  He’s gotten as far as, “I think I get the whole bonding thing, but the names are just so confusing” when Kiyoko interrupts him.

“Okay.”

Sugawara’s eyes widen almost comically.  “Really?”

“Sure.  I don’t exactly have a lot of tutoring experience,” Kiyoko tells him, “but I can try to help you out.”

Sugawara looks so relieved, she almost thinks he might hug her.  He _does_ do a rather enthusiastic fist pump and shout, “Top marks on bio, here I come!”

Kiyoko can’t help smiling at the sight.  (She doesn’t think she’s ever smiled in this gym before.)

Lunch break the next day finds the two of them sitting at a picnic table, biology papers spread across the whole surface.  Assorted rocks, water bottles, and pencil cases are placed in strategic locations to guard against the mischievous wind – but as it turns out, Kiyoko doesn’t really need all of her notes anyway.  She understands biology, keeps knowledge of cell properties and evolutionary theory in her head as safely as she does the names of her classmates or the list of items in her family’s refrigerator at home.  It’s no difficult task to translate her understanding for someone else, especially when that someone else is as willing to listen as Sugawara Koushi.

By the end of the period, Kiyoko’s voice is growing raspy – she’s never talked this much in such a short period of time before – but Sugawara is grinning, proud of his new comprehension and certain he’s going to ace his exam.  Kiyoko feels something warm in the pit of her chest – pride.  She’s proud of him, too.

“Thank you, Shimizu-san,” Sugawara says, gathering up his notebooks.  “You’re really good at explaining stuff.”

“You – you’re welcome,” Kiyoko replies.  She looks down at her backpack, fitting her things inside.  “And – Kiyoko.”

“Kiyoko,” Sugawara repeats.  “You should call me Suga, then.  Everyone else on the team does.”

Kiyoko nods.  Both of them close their backpacks, stand up, and, by some unspoken agreement, start walking back to class together.

After a few steps, Sugawara – Suga – speaks up.  “Kiyoko, can I ask you something?”

“You’ve been asking me things all of lunch,” Kiyoko says.

That startles a laugh out of him.  “Can I ask you one more thing, then?”

Kiyoko nods.  “Sure.”

“Every day at practice, I see you getting out your textbooks, reading, taking notes,” Suga begins.  “You’re always studying so hard – you’re at the top of our class – and you’re also such a good manager.  That must be so much work.  Why do you do it?”

It’s weird – Kiyoko knows, has known for months, that she’s a good manager, but it’s something else to hear someone else say it.  It’s good.  She’s so caught up in that good, proud feeling that she almost forgets Suga asked her a question until she catches him looking at her, eyes wide and curious.

“Well, I have goals,” Kiyoko eventually tells him.  “I want to go to a top university and become a doctor.”

Suga looks down at his feet.  Kiyoko follows his gaze – his footsteps are larger than hers, his legs longer, but he’s walking slowly to match her pace.  _Right, left, right, left_ together – like a team.

After a moment, he looks back up at her and asks, “Do your parents want you to become a doctor?”

Kiyoko shakes her head.  “No, it’s my dream.  Not theirs.”

“Why?”

Kiyoko has to think about that for a second.  It’s been her goal for such a long time – university, medical school, top profession – that she hasn’t bothered to consider _why_.  And besides, nobody else has ever asked.

“I suppose – the job of a doctor is challenging, but also rewarding,” she says slowly.  “And that’s what I want.  I want to help people with my mind.  I know I don’t have a very good personality or anything, but I have a good mind, and I think I can do a lot with it.  Solve hard problems.  Cure illnesses.  Figure out what’s wrong, and then fix it.  Something like that.”

Suga nods and gives her a grin – too big for his face, or perhaps just big enough, and so bright it’s nearly blinding.  “That’s really cool of you, Kiyoko,” he tells her.

* * *

After that, word gets around to the other first- and second-years that Kiyoko is a good tutor.  She’s not sure exactly what Suga told them, but she suddenly has requests for help with all subjects coming from all directions.  Almost overnight, she finds herself explaining English grammar before practice, looking at tricky geometry problems on the bus to matches, and reciting history facts in between bites of onigiri at lunch time. 

Kiyoko knows that she should say no to some of the requests and use the time to study herself, yet she just can’t bring herself to reject any.  Tutoring others is good practice for herself, she tells her parents when they ask her why she’s getting home later than before – but it’s more than that.  It’s the glint in a Suga’s eyes when a biology concept clicks, as though a lightbulb is going off in his brain.  It’s the tiny smile on Sawamura’s face when he finally understands how the right hand rule works.  It’s the way Azumane slams his whole fist down on the picnic table in triumph when he gets a math problem right.  It’s the triumphant high fives all of the guys she’s helped give her after receiving good marks on their exams.  It’s the best kind of pride, helping people understand things they never thought they could.

And, more than that, tutoring her teammates brings them farther from just _teammates_ and closer to something like _friends_.  Between discussions of what that book they’re reading is really about and slightly more off-topic arguments of whether or not manga can be considered literature, Sawamura becomes _Daichi._   After an admission that he really likes poetry, even though he has a hard time understanding it, Azumane becomes _Asahi._   The second-years wave hi to her in the hallways, the first-years invite her to sit with them at lunch even when she isn’t tutoring.  She even gets invited to a couple of after-practice nikuman devouring sessions.  (She doesn’t go, but the invitation means everything.)

By the time final exams for the year roll around, Kiyoko has a whole system worked out.  She’s making photocopies of her flashcards, she’s typing up her notes and emailing them to the guys, she’s quizzing them during practice.  She asks questions about English vocabulary or poetic devices or historical figures during drills, and refuses to send the ball to a player until he can answer correctly.

Coach Ukai calls her out after practice the first day she does that, chastises her for distracting his team. with other subjects when they should be focused on volleyball.  But Kiyoko just meets his stare, no tremble in her crossed arms.

“Not all of these guys are going to play volleyball for the rest of their lives,” she tells him, “but to get good, steady jobs, they need to do well on their exams.  With all due respect, sensei, would you rather have a bunch of great players who aren’t allowed to play because they’re failing their classes, or would you rather have a bunch of players who are slightly less great, but more confident because their grades are good?  The school’s policy is that athletes have to be students first, sensei.  I’m just following that.”

The longer Kiyoko works on the team, the harder it gets for Ukai to argue with her.

(None of the first- or second-years fail any exams that year.)

* * *

Kiyoko strides through the gym door the morning of her first day as a second-year, and it feels unfamiliar again.

The building is not much changed – sunlight still permeates the open windows, illuminating the rafters above her head and the polished floor beneath her feet – although she can pick out a few places where repairs have been made since the last practice she attended.  The real changes are less tangible, more obvious.  The third-years are gone, sent off to college to play on better teams.  Coach Ukai is gone, thrust unwillingly into retirement by an old injury causing new pain.  The second-years are gone, submerged into schoolwork instead of a team with no hope of winning anything.

Three boys stand at the back of the gym.  Three boys – only second-years, now, without senpais or a coach to guide them.  Daichi, Suga, and Asahi look oddly tiny, like half of a wall where a castle once stood, the only remnants of a once-great dynasty.

They look small, but they’re here.  And so is she.

“What are we going to do?” Kiyoko asks.

Suga and Asahi glance at Daichi.  (He’s shorter than the two of them, but he’s grounded, centered, better at receives than anyone else on the team.  He’ll make a good captain, Kiyoko thinks.)

“Our best,” he says.

And so they sit down in that gym, the four of them, and they develop a practice schedule, look at tournament information, argue over the best way to find a new coach.  Kiyoko doesn’t say much, except to offer the occasional idea – mostly, she listens to these three second-years who care too much about volleyball to let their team die.  Daichi is practical, going through concepts one by one and methodically writing down every word in his neat handwriting.  Suga is determined, insisting that they can get tons of new members if they try hard enough and raising his voice with excitement.  Asahi is nervous, wondering aloud how this can ever work.  Daichi pats him on the back, tells him not to be such a wimp – Suga agrees, a broad grin on his face – and Asahi sighs, lies back against the smooth floor, and suggests that maybe they should bribe potential new members by buying them pork buns after practice.

Suga shouts his approval, Daichi nods slowly, and Kiyoko can’t keep a smile from growing on her face.  They’re going to be fine, she thinks.  Just fine.

* * *

Soon enough, the club gains new members.  Or, well, it doesn’t gain new members so much as new members burst through the door, yelling and jumping.

Tanaka and Nishinoya have some kind of raw energy, _let’s do it_ and _don’t stop until we get this right_ and _we can beat those suckers_.  They’re loud, they’re crude, and they’re exactly what the team needs.  The friends they drag in with them – Ennoshita, Kinoshita, and Narita – are less passionate, but still, more bodies playing volleyball, more hearts on the team.

For the sake of the team, Kiyoko does her best to ignore Tanaka and Nishinoya in everything not volleyball-related.  They’ve had crushes on her since day one, it’s painfully obvious.  They can’t even look at her, even when she’s talking directly to them, and they’re constantly going on about how pretty she is.  They even have an ongoing bet on who’s going to ask her out first.  By the end of the previous year, most of the guys on the team were finally respecting Kiyoko for who she was as a manager (and a tutor), but these first-years are new.  Her progress from the past year laughs spitefully, puts on its jacket, and marches right out the door.

And it’s not just Tanaka and Nishinoya, either.  Every time Karasuno goes to a practice match, or a competition, or even just to a new location for training, guys from all the other teams do double-takes as Kiyoko passes by.  She can’t hear their whispers so much as she can feel them in her bones – _who is that girl?  Is she their team’s manager?  They’re so lucky to have a cute girl manager.  She’s so hot.  Should I talk to her?  Would she talk to me?  I wonder if she’d go out with me.  I wonder if she’s going out with one of them.  She’s_ so _hot._ Every time, without fail – to the point where she starts to dread the team going anywhere that isn’t Karasuno gym number two.  These boys are complimenting her, she supposes, but their words don’t feel like compliments.  They feel like daggers from all directions, slicing away at her confidence and her determination until she’s nothing more than the pretty face everyone sees as she passes by.

It frustrates Kiyoko like no difficult math problem ever has, but she deals with it.  What can she do, punch them?  Tell them to leave her alone, or else?  She doesn’t know how to punch, and she doubts they’d take any ultimatum seriously.  And if she complained to their adviser, one of the P.E. teachers who reluctantly agreed to supervise practice, he’d probably only laugh at her.  The guys on other teams are far away, only a bother during matches.  The two first-years are only obnoxious boys with crushes.  Mostly harmless.  Mostly harmless.

 _Mostly harmless,_ Kiyoko tells herself.  Still, it grates on her, like a pin in the side of her jacket.  Always in the back of her mind during practices and games, preventing her from concentrating completely.

Until two months into the year, when Suga approaches her before practice with a request.

“Tutor Nishinoya?” Kiyoko asks, struggling to keep the indignation out of her voice.

“Yeah, he needs help with literature,” Suga explains.  “His class is doing that play with the warrior who becomes a monk, you know the one?”

Kiyoko knows the one, all right.  She got a perfect score on her essay on it the previous year.  What she doesn’t know is whether or not she can help Nishinoya understand it.

“Why are you asking me for him?” Kiyoko wonders, even though she can guess the answer.

Suga fidgets, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  “He’s scared to talk to you.  You know that.”

She does – Tanaka finally spoke to her a week after the Interhigh preliminaries (stuttered out a few complimentary syllables, then ran before she could even reject him properly), winning the first-years’ bet, but Nishinoya hasn’t worked up the courage yet.  And for a moment, she’s overwhelmed with hatred for both of them – she’s just a girl, isn’t she?  Not some queen or goddess or untouchable _thing._   Why do they have to be so scared of her?

“But he might be less scared if you tutored him,” Suga suggests, breaking into her thoughts.  “You don’t have to be super nice or anything, just ... Help.  A little.”

Kiyoko thinks it should’ve have to be _her_ job to relieve this tension, but.  But.  She isn’t the type to back down from a challenge.

“Okay,” she says.  And then repeats it, just to solidify her resolve.  “Okay.”

* * *

For the first fifteen minutes of their tutoring session, Nishinoya can barely string two words together.

They’re sitting on the ground outside the gym after practice, their backs to the cool cement wall.  It’s a perfect fall day, breezy but not too chilly, and Nishinoya is looking at the soft white clouds up above, the distant line of mountains on the horizon, the flock of birds heading south – anywhere but at her.  He replies to her questions with nods and shakes of his head, so violent she’s irrationally afraid his head might spin right off his neck.

By the time Kiyoko has explained the same instance of symbolism for the third time and received no acknowledgement save a reluctant nod, she’s fed up.

“Look, I’m not interested in you,” she says bluntly.  “I’ll do my job at practice, and I’m helping you with this because Suga asked me to, but that’s it.  Please don’t expect anything else – and you can tell Tanaka that the same goes for him.”

Nishinoya’s face falls – he’s fifteen, she knows, smart, and the best libero their team has had in years, but right now, he looks more like a kid who just learned his favorite ice cream flavor has been discontinued.   He stares at her for a long moment, tears welling in his big, [hazel] eyes, then sighs and drops his head slowly to the table.  Kiyoko can’t help feeling guilty, in spite of everything.

And so she continues speaking, unplanned.  “Don’t take it personally.  I’m not interested in anyone.”

At that, Nishinoya looks up (Kiyoko pretends she can’t see the wet spots on his cheeks) – eyes wide and brimming with curiosity.  “Really?” he asks.

Kiyoko shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Romance, dating – not really my thing.”

“Not with _anyone_?”  This is pretty far from the kind of conversation Kiyoko expected to have today, but, hey – at least Nishinoya’s talking to her.  That feels like some kind of victory.

She shrugs again at his question.

Nishinoya peers closely at her, the same way he peers up at the net when trying to figure out where the ball will land next.  “What is that like?” he asks.  “Never thinking about that stuff?  I mean –”  His face goes red, all the way to the tips of his ears, and he ducks his head.  “I mean, you don’t have to answer.  I don’t mean to be disrespectful or anything.”

“No, it’s okay,” Kiyoko assures him.

That seems to be enough invitation for him to keep talking.  “If it’s okay – I just ... can’t imagine.  I think about that stuff all the time, you know?  I get attracted to people just looking at them – I see someone, and I like them, and my mind goes to all these places – it’s, like, automatic.  Do you just ... not have that?”

Kiyoko doesn’t.  She doesn’t answer him aloud, but she starts to wonder – staring up at the late afternoon sun, notes completely abandoned on the ground next to her.  When she was younger, and she saw her parents kissing, or people on TV confessing their undying love, or even couples holding hands as they walked down the street, she never understood why they did it, or what it meant.  Romance and sex were completely foreign concepts, but she just assumed they were things she’d figure out when she was older, like driving or taxes.  And yet now, she’s older, and she still doesn’t understand.

It’s not that she looks down on the other girls in her class, for gossiping about how cute some guy looks or wanting to see the newest romance film – she just doesn’t see the appeal of those things.  Sometimes, it feels as though the rest of the world is speaking in a language she never learned, and she’s left staring on the sidelines, wondering what they could possibly be saying.  She’s thrown herself into schoolwork and volleyball, never bothered to dwell too much on something she doesn’t understand, but she wonders.

Maybe the constant stream of unwanted compliments would be easier to float upon if she found herself a nice boyfriend, but she doesn’t want one.  The same way she wants to become a doctor, she doesn’t want a boyfriend.

Is something wrong with her?

“I don’t think that’s a really bad thing, Shimizu-san,” Nishinoya says, as though he can hear her thoughts.  She turns to look at him, and – he’s smiling at her, kind and earnest.  “It’s just ... different.  I’m a little jealous, to be honest.  It’d be way easier to concentrate in practice if I wasn’t always thinking about how Asahi-san – I mean, um –”  He covers his mouth with his hand, but Kiyoko can clearly tell that his cheeks are as red as stoplights.

 _Not bad, just different,_ Kiyoko repeats to herself.  She’s not sure she quite believes him, but that’s something she can think about later.  Right now, she has a job to do.

“So, back to the story,” Kiyoko interrupts Nishinoya’s stammering.

“Yes!” he practically shouts.  “Back to the story!  Warrior-turned-monk feels regret!”

He looks so relieved, Kiyoko can’t help smiling at him, just a little.  She picks up Nishinoya’s copy of the play and flips it open to one of her favorite passages.  “What you need to understand about this story is that even though it was written a long time ago in archaic language, the themes, the _ideas_ of the story are still true today.”

Nishinoya nods enthusiastically.  “Okay.  Got it.”

Tutoring him is much easier from that point on, and they part ways half an hour later with the first year bowing low and thanking her profusely – their conversation about _interest_ seemingly forgotten.  But it lingers in the back of Kiyoko’s mind as she walks home, her thoughts shifting from _something must be wrong with me_ to _not bad, just different_ to _I wish I could just understand._

Romance and sex aren’t things she can just _understand_ , though.  She can’t research them or study them the same way she could biology or math.  There aren’t any reference texts on why most girls want boyfriends, or what it means if they don’t.

Aren’t there?

The more Kiyoko thinks about it, the more she isn’t sure.

So, that night, after she’s finished her homework and her parents have gone to bed, she opens up a new window on her computer. 

 _What does it mean if you’re not attracted to anyone?_ she types into the search engine.  She’s not expecting many results, but she’s hoping.  If one other person, somewhere in the world, feels the same way she does, she thinks that might just be –

There are more results than she’d ever hoped for.

Not only do more people feel like her, they _accept_ it.  There are whole communities out there for people like her, supporting each other and helping each other feel confident in who they are.  There are _terms_ – and Kiyoko has always loved biology because it’s based on terms with logical definitions, a baseline that anyone can understand if they’re willing to learn, but seeing terms that seem to have been invented just for her is something else.

 _Asexual,_ she whispers to herself.  _Aromantic._   Strange terms, English terms, but they sound right.  Kiyoko finds an online quiz that’s supposed to help determine where she falls on the asexual spectrum (there’s a whole _spectrum_ ), and she feels like she knows the results before she even begins.

For a long time, Kiyoko just sits at her desk, staring at her computer – holding the words _asexual_ and _aromantic_ in her heart next to an odd kind of shivery feeling, like when she watches Karasuno win a match but _better._

Before she goes to sleep that night, she takes out two blank index cards from her backpack.  She writes _asexual_ on one of them and _aromantic_ on the other, then prints the definitions neatly on the back.  She tapes both cards to the wall above her bed.

Kiyoko falls asleep with a grin on her face.

* * *

The next day at practice, a few minutes before the start of the warm-up, Kiyoko walks over to Daichi and Suga, deep in a conversation about which kind of soda they should get for their next team party.

“Hey,” she says.  “Can I talk to you guys for a second?”

“Sure,” Suga exclaims, at the same time as Daichi replies, “Of course.”

“Oh, and – and, um, Asahi, too, if he’s here yet?”  Kiyoko glances around and locates the third second-year on the other side of the gym, tossing a ball back and forth with Tanaka and Nishinoya.  Suga motions Asahi over with a smile, and the first-years follow a few steps behind, curious.

Suga looks at Kyoko, a question in his bright blue eyes.  “Them, too?”

Kyoko considers for a moment, then nods.  She hadn’t originally planned on including the two first-years, but she should, she thinks.

Once they’re close enough to hear her easily, she takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, there’s something I want to tell you.”

The guys look at each other, clearly confused – she can practically see them thinking, _What’s going on?  Does she like one of us?_   She has to hold herself back from smiling at the irony of the truth.

“Have any of you ever heard the terms asexual or aromantic?” Kyoko asks.

Most of them haven’t – they shake their heads and wait for her to explain.  Suga, to her pleasant surprise, brightens at the question.

“I have, actually!” he tells her.  “Asexual people don’t experience sexual attraction, and aromantic people don’t experience romantic attraction, right?”

Kiyoko nods.  She can feel her cheeks flushing and her hands shaking, as though she’s about to give a big presentation in front of her class, but she can’t back down now.

She looks each of the five boys in the eyes in turn, then says, as steadily as she can, “I have recently come to the realization that I am both of those things.”

For a moment, all of them are silent.  Kiyoko takes in their reactions – surprised, bemused, but not angry.  Not resentful.  This is better than she expected.

Tanaka is the first to speak.  “Wait, this means I have no chance in dating you!” he bursts out.

Daichi glances at his kouhai, lowering one eyebrow in his trademark captain’s stare.  “Do you really think you had a chance in the first place?”

“Daichi!” Suga reprimands him.  “Don’t be so mean!”

“What?” Daichi argues.  “It’s true.”

Asahi stifles a laugh at that.

“Okay,” Suga admits, much to Tanaka’s chagrin, “but can we get back to the reason Kiyoko wanted to talk to us in the first place?  This is about her, not Tanaka.”

And just like that, all eyes are on her again.

“So, no ... No sexual or romantic attraction?” Asahi asks, reaching up with one hand to adjust his bun.  “How does that work?”

Kiyoko is ready to answer this question – she thought about it earlier this morning, while she was walking to school.  “Okay, think of it this way – think about basketball.  Basketball is a pretty cool sport, right?”

The guys all nod.  They don’t know where this is going, but they trust her.

“You can see why other people enjoy playing it, or would be really excited about it,” Kiyoko goes on.  “But it’s not _your_ sport.  You yourself don’t play it, or get excited about it.  That’s how I feel about romance and sex.  I’m not against it or anything – I’m just not interested.  Boyfriends, dating, marriage ... I don’t want any of that.”

Kiyoko watches their faces as they consider her explanation.  Daichi is nodding slowly, Asahi is smiling the same way he does when he figures out how to solve a math problem, and Tanaka and Nishinoya both look more curious than angry.

Suga gives her a grin.  “Kiyoko, I know I say this a lot, but you’re really good at explaining things,” he tells her.

“Thank you,” Kiyoko replies, feeling her cheeks flush pink with the compliment.

“No, thank _you_ ,” Daichi says.  “Thank you for telling us this – for trusting us, and for being brave enough to be honest.”  The other four guys nod in agreement.

Kiyoko had expected confusion.  She’d expected anger.  She’d expected to be told she was making something up, that there was no way _asexual_ was a real, valid sexuality – that was what happened so often in the coming out stories she’d read from other people in her newfound community.  But instead, these guys – her teammates, her _friends_ – are trying to understand.  They trust her.  They believe her.

She doesn’t know what to say.

Kiyoko ducks her head, half in a bow and half in an attempt to conceal her blush.  When she looks up again, the boys are all smiling at her – and she wonders if this is how it feels to be in a game, where the only way to win is by completely trusting the people around you, by having each other’s backs – _all for one and one for all._

“Um, Shimizu-san,” Tanaka speaks up.  He fidgets, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.  “Is there anything we can do to, I don’t know, help?”

“Maybe to make up for bothering you when you weren’t interested?” Nishinoya chimes in.

Kiyoko ... might have to reconsider her feelings about these first-years.

“Well – maybe,” she says, finding her voice again.  “There might be one thing, but I’m not sure if –”

“We’ll do it!” both of them assure her.

“Okay.”  Kiyoko smiles – their enthusiasm really is contagious.  “I don’t really know if there’s any way to do this, but I wish I could somehow convey my ... non-interest to all of the guys on opposing teams when we go to tournaments.  They always talk about how I look, like I’m not even there, and it makes me kind-of uncomfortable.”

Tanaka looks at Nishinoya.  Nishinoya looks at Tanaka.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nishinoya shouts.

“Bro, I’m _always_ thinking what you’re thinking,” Tanaka yells.

They turn back to Kiyoko and say in unison, as though rehearsed, “ _Shimizu-san, will you allow us to defend your honor?_ ”

She’s not entirely sure what they mean, but she agrees, anyway.  It’s hard to say no to Tanaka and Nishinoya when they put their minds to something, and she likes the sound of that phrase, _defend your honor._   Like she’s someone important who deserves to be defended.

And then, the next time Karasuno goes to a practice match, when the other team starts whispering about how pretty she is and how lucky their team must be to have her, Tanaka and Nishinoya _go after them._   They run at the offending players, baring their teeth and shouting, “How dare you talk about our Shimizu-san like that?!”  They remind her of guardian spirits, growing many centimeters taller and changing color to terrify off unwanted suitors.

After the offenders have been sufficiently warded off, the two first-years approach Kiyoko.

“How did we do, Shimizu-san?” they ask eagerly.

“You did ... That was great,” Kiyoko says.  She wouldn’t admit it outright, but she’s impressed.  “Please continue to do that.  If you don’t mind.”

Nishinoya holds up his hand for a high-five, and Tanaka slaps it so hard he leaves a red mark.  The two of them grin at her, then turn to go start warming up.

“Wait!” Kiyoko calls after them – louder than she’d intended.  They look back at her, and she says, “You can call me Kiyoko.”

And something about the looks on their faces – starry-eyed and shining – makes her wonder if their fascination with her is because of more than just her appearance.  That thought alone buoys her through the next week.

(True to their promise, Tanaka and Nishinoya continue to scare off opposing teams at future games.  Sometimes, they get a little too carried away, but she can deal with that easily enough.  A slap to the back of the head won’t take them off the court.)

* * *

By the time she reaches her third year, Kiyoko has managing the Karasuno volleyball team down to a science.

She has a specific system of organizing her notebooks, with different sections for defensive plays and offensive and different colored markers for each player.  She has detailed records of the gym’s storage closet, spare equipment and old uniforms.  She has a sets of index cards for every member of the team, even those that rarely ever play in games – cards detailing their records on drills, individual strengths and weaknesses, and training suggestions.  Once a week, she meets with Daichi and Suga to discuss their team, plan out practices and vent about difficulties.  (Their newly hired advisor, Takeda-sensei, joins them at first, and it’s at one of those meetings that she tells him she heard once from old Coach Ukai that he has a grandson who played on the Karasuno team during its best years and still lives in the area.)

The four new first-years are a handful, certainly – they alternate between enthusiastic and hostile with no apparent middle ground – but they’re talented.  She can see as plainly as Daichi can that Hinata and Kageyama’s fast quick might be just what Karasuno needs to get on the next level.  And so she incorporates them seamlessly into her system, buys new packs of index cards and finds new markers in her set, bright orange and royal blue, dark red and cool green.

(When she shows Hinata one of his cards, with his new record percentage of correct receives during a drill compared to at practice during his first week, she thinks he might cry.  Kageyama asks to look at his cards and reads over them for half an hour, staring them down as though trying to commit each statistic to memory.  Tsukkishima pretends to be uninterested, but he never leaves a practice game day without asking her if he’s broken his block record yet.  And when she tells Yamaguchi she notices him practicing those serves and thinks he’s getting a lot better, he gives her one of the most sincere “thank you”s she’s ever heard.)

Nishinoya returns, Asahi follows, and their team gets better.  Karasuno is working harder now than she can ever remember it working before, even under the old Coach Ukai.  And Kiyoko’s team can’t work harder without her matching its pace.

And somehow, between practices and games and planning sessions, her team becomes her family.  She _knows_ them – not only that that Hinata receives serves best when he’s on the right side of the court or that Asahi hits his most accurate spikes exactly two meters from the net, but also that Nishinoya hates reading, that Suga will double over laughing at a bad pun, that Tsukkishima listens to American punk music to psyche himself up for games.  She knows their strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears.  She knows why each one of them gets out of bed in the mornings and comes to practice an hour before school starts.  And she’s right there with them, handing them balls and recording their times.

These boys have shaped her, as though she was a block of clay that each of them pulled and pushed in turn into a beautiful sculpture.  They’ve showed her that she can be more than just a top student determined to get into university.  She can be a helper, a teacher, a manager, a strategist – a friend.

It isn’t that Kiyoko’s goal shifts from becoming a doctor to coaching volleyball – if anything, her will to follow through on that dream gets stronger.  She wants to go to a top medical school, but she also wants to love her life with a violent passion, the way Hinata and Kageyama love volleyball.  She wants to support her friends solidly and steadily, the way Daichi and Nishinoya receive serves.  She wants to encourage everyone around her, the way Suga and Tanaka cheer on their teammates.  She wants to never give up, the way the Karasuno volleyball team never admits defeat until the ball has hit the ground for the last time.

Once, during a practice match, she hears Kageyama tell Hinata, “ _As long as I’m here, you’re invincible.”_   He’s talking about quicks and blockers, but the words resonate with her as though they’re about larger-than-life battles and world-changing wars.  She thinks that as long as she has Karasuno – her team, calling out for tosses and jumping at spikes and getting to morning practice half an hour early – she’s invincible.  Even though she’s never stepped foot on the court during a game, she shouts at their victories and curses at their defeats.  She watches the spikers leap and hover in the air as though wings have transformed out of the uniforms on their backs – and she believes that these boys can do anything.

If they can do anything, so can she.

And that’s why, when she finds the banner buried beneath boxes of deflated volleyballs and broken water bottles, she knows immediately what she has to do.

The banner is at least as old as she is, with tears in the corners, dust on the edges, and what looks like a soda stain on the back, but the lettering is clear: _Fly._   It’s the most beautiful banner Kiyoko has ever seen, and she knows her team will think the same.

She rolls it up and carries it home, and then does something she hasn’t in years: asks her mother for help.  She explains that she wants to mend the tears, clean the fabric of all its dust, and restore it to its former glory, and asks humbly for any advice her mother can give her.

Kiyoko’s mother looks at her, a bemused expression on her face.  “Of course I’ll help you,” she says, “but if you’re going to go to all this trouble, why not just buy a new banner?  I’m sure there are companies you could order something like that from.”

Kiyoko shakes her head vehemently.  “No.  It has to be this one.”

Her mother gets out a sewing box, black fabric, and black thread.  She shows Kiyoko how to thread the needle, how to knot the thread securely at the edge of the banner, then the two of them start working from different sides, stitching up tears in the fabric.  When Kiyoko proves to be decidedly less dexterous with a needle than her mother – she keeps poking her fingers instead of the fabric – she’s switched to scrubbing duty, cleaning the stains from the banner with powerful soap and a wet cloth.

For a while, Kiyoko and her mother sit there in the kitchen, each bent over their own tasks.  It’s comfortable, companionable silence, the kind Kiyoko hasn’t had with her mother in a long time.

Until her mother breaks it.  “Why is this so important to you?” she asks.  She looks at Kiyoko over her mending, and her gaze is discerning – familiar.

“It’s not this banner, specifically,” Kiyoko replies, struggling to think of the right words.  “It’s the guys on my team.  They’re important to me.  They’ve worked so hard and they want to win so badly, and I think this will help.  I want to watch them succeed.  And this banner – it’s a remnant of the old Karasuno, the champion our school used to be, so if I can restore it to its former glory, it’ll be a metaphor for the team itself, pushed to victory by the hard work of its members.  Or something like that.”  Kiyoko ducks her head over the banner, afraid she’s said too much.

But her mother only smiles at her.  “I see all that work studying symbolism for literature class has really paid off.”

Kiyoko shrugs.  There’s a pause while her mother works around a particularly impressive tear, then she continues, “But really, I’ve never heard you talk this much about anything besides your classes and your goals.”

Kiyoko shrugs again.  (It’s something she does a lot around her parents, shrugging.  How was school today?  Shrug.  Did the game go well?  Shrug.  Is there anything you want to talk about?  Shrug.)

“You know that your father and I will support you, whatever you want to do, right?” her mother says.

Kiyoko nods.  There’s one stain, right in the center of the banner, that seems determined to stay – it must be a Hinata brand of soda.  “Yes, and I’m so grateful for that,” she tells her mother.  “But this team – this sport – they’re not going to make me want to change my plans.  They’re important in a different way.”

There’s another pause, this one unrelated to sewing.  And then, Kiyoko’s mother says, “I’ll see if I can get off work one of the days of the tournament.”

Kiyoko thought jaw-dropping was a hyperbole, but no, her mouth literally opens wide enough to fit more nikuman than Tanaka eats in a day.  “Kaa-san,” she finally manages after several shell-shocked seconds.  “Kaa-san, you don’t have to do that.  You’re – you’re not going to understand anything that’s going on.  You’re not a sports person, and volleyball is kind-of confusing, and –”

“I know,” her mother interrupts.  “But I want to see this team that’s so important to you.”

And there isn’t much Kiyoko can say to that.

* * *

She brings the banner out at practice a few days later, the day before the Interhigh Preliminaries.

The mended cloth is accompanied by more ceremony than she’d anticipated, what with her and Coach Takeda going all the way to the balcony to open it up.  Still, she can’t deny that it looks beautiful and majestic up here, sleek and black with a single determined message.  Other teams might have skilled receives, powerful spikes, or iron walls, but Karasuno will soar right over their heads.  Karasuno has a fighting spirit.  Karasuno has heart.  There’s no contesting it – these crows _will_ fly again.

The second- and third-years tearing up within seconds of looking at the banner, and Kiyoko, for her part, can’t get out the words she rehearsed in the mirror several times that morning.  She wants to tell them why she’s done this, how sure she is that they’ll take back Karasuno’s legacy, that she believes in them so much – but she sees the looks on the upperclassmen’s faces, and she knows that she doesn’t have to tell them.  They understand already.

“Do your best,” she says.

And Suga and Daichi are crying, and Asahi is crying, and Tanaka and Nishinoya are openly weeping, and she thinks even Hinata might be crying, even though he’s barely been on the team a few weeks.  Kiyoko would be lying if she said there weren’t tears in her eyes, too.

* * *

“Are you sure you want to continue with volleyball?” Takeda-sensei asks the third-years after the Interhigh.  “Please, really think about this.  Consider your future.”

The guidance counselor watches from the side of the room, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed against his chest.  He doesn’t say a word as, one by one, Suga, Daichi, and Asahi stand up, say they want to keep playing, and walk out of the room.  Both teachers seem unsurprised at the boys’ decision.

Kiyoko watches them go.  She thinks – carefully considers this decision, as she tries to with all choices.  Should she leave the club?  College is looming so close, and her grades are good but they could always be _better_ –

And yes, she could find a new first- or second-year to manage the team and give her duties over to them.  It would be simple enough – a few more practices, a few sessions explaining her system, and she could leave the Karasuno volleyball team on its own.   She _could._   But Kiyoko doesn’t want to let go just yet.

She doesn’t want to let go just yet.  Her team still has a long way to go, and she wants to help get them there.  She wants to be standing on the sidelines when they win.  She might not be an ace or a captain or even a starting member, but her team needs her – and she supposes, with a curious _huh_ of realization, that she needs them, too.

Kiyoko stands up.

“I want to keep –” she starts.

“Wait, Shimizu,” her guidance counselor interrupts her.  “Do you really want to do this?  What about your dream of medical school?  Colleges will understand, you know, if you stop going to club activities in your third year to focus on your studies.  You don’t have to overwork yourself.”

Kiyoko shakes her head.  She looks at her counselor, her gaze the same iron-plated spear that once took old Coach Ukai down.  “I know what I’m capable of,” she tells him simply.  “I know I can do this.  I want to do this.  I’m going to do this.  I’m not leaving the volleyball club.”

With that, she strides out the door, her head held high.  Her guidance counselor watches her with confusion, and Takeda-sensei watches her with something like awe.

Just outside, she finds Suga, Daichi, and Asahi waiting for her.  They look at her nervously – and she has to stifle a laugh, that they think she could do anything but stay with them.  As though they’re anything but her best friends.

Kiyoko glances up at the clock on the wall, then grins at the boys.  “Come on,” she says.  “We’re going to be late for practice.”

And she takes off, sprinting down the hallways and towards the clubroom, exhilaration and fearlessness and _invincibility_ pumping in her veins.  The boys follow, and she can feel their smiles warming her back.

* * *

Preparing for the trip to Tokyo feels like a test of everything Kiyoko’s learned over the past three years.

Not only does she have to figure out schedules, write up complicated permission forms, and help Takeda-sensei stay on budget (he wants to do _everything_ _it’s possible to do_ in Tokyo, and although she respects his enthusiasm, their club does not have unlimited funds) – she has to help ensure that all of her team can actually go on the trip by what feels like tutoring all of them at once.

Tanaka and Nishinoya need more help than ever, it seems – and on top of that, Hinata and Kageyama are two steps away from completely clueless.  Not to mention that the third-years have to do particularly well on these exams, with college applications looming so close ahead of them … They start holding group study sessions after practice, with the different age groups sitting together and working on the same problem sets.  Kiyoko walks from one group to the next, helping Nishinoya understand the language in his literature essay and Suga puzzle over an organic chemistry diagram, helping Kageyama work through a geometry proof and Asahi translate an English poem.

Practice goes later and later every day, and Kiyoko is staying up well past midnight just to have time to study herself, but it’s all worth it to see the looks on her teammates’ faces when they get something right.  The first time she helps Hinata and Kageyama understand the difference between perfective and imperfective verbs (using a metaphor about spiking volleyballs, no less), they stand up and bow low, thanking her profusely.  Tanaka and Nishinoya work together to solve physics problems, and once they finally get a hard-to-find answer, Tanaka will pick Nishinoya up and hoist him in the air, both of them shouting.  Suga still smiles broadly whenever he gets a biology question right, and even Daichi gets a quietly proud look on his face when he remembers historical facts correctly.

One afternoon, after a particularly busy practice, Tsukkishima approaches Kiyoko as she’s starting to head home.

“Shimizu-san,” he says.  His long legs catch up to her easily, and they walk together down the path towards the school’s entrance.  “How do you do it?”

“How do I do what?” she asks, curious.  Tsukkishima isn’t exactly the talkative type.

“Tutor those guys,” he clarifies.  “They’re all so stupid, and it takes them such a long time to get stuff right.  How do you not get frustrated?”

Tsukkishima’s been helping out with the tutoring, of his fellow first-years mostly.  He’s smart, certainly, but quick to lose patience and call his teammates stupid instead of helping them.  Kiyoko was considering talking to him about it, so she’s glad he approached her.

“I’m patient,” she tells him.  “That’s not a bad trait to have, patience.  And when someone doesn’t understand my explanation at first, I try to think of it as my fault instead of theirs, and I explain it a different way.  Different people understand things in different ways, so you have to find new strategies for each person.  It’s challenging, and I like the challenge.”

“Challenging,” Tsukkishima repeats.  “Okay.  Thanks for the advice, Shimizu-san.”

“You’re welcome,” she says.

He doesn’t become gentler overnight after that conversation, but she can see him biting his tongue and saying, “Let me think about how to explain this better” instead of just insulting Kageyama the next few times the two of them struggle with math homework.  And, as the days go on and the studying becomes less of a chore and more of a triumph, Kiyoko realizes she’s proud of Tsukkishima for becoming a better tutor, just as much as she is of the others for studying hard.

And then – and _then,_ Hinata finds her a new manager.

Yachi is short, she’s disorganized, and she blushes too easily.  When she introduces herself to Kiyoko, she bows so deeply, she nearly hits her head on a desk straightening back up.  At practice, she’s clearly confused about how volleyball works but too nervous to ask questions.  She’s frightened of tall boys with longer shadows, of high jumps and powerful spikes.

She’s not unlike Kiyoko herself, when she started on the team two years ago.

Kiyoko talks to Yachi, explains her system of notebooks and index cards, introduces her to each team member in turn.  She can see that beneath Yachi’s nervous exterior is a girl ready to work hard for her team, and that’s all Karasuno really needs.  Hard work, perseverance, and a smiling face.

(Yachi calls Kiyoko, “Shimizu-senpai” with an unbelievable kind of admiration in her voice, and Kiyoko thinks she finally understands why Nishinoya spends most of his allowance buying Hinata popsicles after practice.)

And finally, after weeks of studying, tutoring, and practicing, the Karasuno team stands on the platform of Tokyo station.  They’re here, they’re strong, and they’re ready to take on the world.  Kiyoko couldn’t be more proud of them.

* * *

The last practice before the spring tournament preliminaries is strangely solemn.

They run through warm-ups and drills, silent except for a few commands here and there.  Everyone is on edge, everyone knows that there’s nothing they can do from here to get better – no more practices, no more drills, _nothing_ , except try their hardest in matches tomorrow, and the day after, and hopefully the day after that.  Even Tanaka, Nishinoya, and Hinata are quiet, receiving and spiking without their usual enthusiastic sound effects.

The guys leave for an easy fifteen-minute jog, Yachi excuses herself for a few minutes to go to the bathroom, and Kiyoko looks around the empty gym, wondering at how much time she’s spent in here.  Has it added up to several months of her life?  A year?  Perhaps a year – she’s spent a year’s worth of hours taking notes, tossing volleyballs, watching boys shout and jump and cry.  A year’s worth of hours she wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

Kiyoko picks up a few stray volleyballs, straightens some boxes in the closet, and tries not to think about the piles of notebooks and index cards sitting on her desk at home – notebooks and index cards that will be useless after tomorrow if her team fails.

When the boys return, they gather in a circle and sit on the cool gym floor.  The third-years’ speeches begin with little preamble; Asahi goes first, then Suga, then Daichi.  They speak about their favorite memories with their team, what they’ve learned, and how much they’re going to miss this when they leave.  “If we don’t win this year, you have to keep trying,” Suga says, at the end of his speech.  “Fight and fight and fight until we win.  Stand on the court as long as you can.”  And Daichi stands up next to him, and begins his own speech with, “If I am a good captain, it’s only because you are a good team.”

When Daichi sits down, wiping the wetness from the corner of his eye, Kiyoko thinks that part of her doesn’t want this practice to ever end.

“Well.”  Coach Ukai stands up, his expression slightly less hostile than usual.  “That was certainly something.  I’m just going to finish this off by saying –”

“Wait.  I want to say something, too.”

And all eyes immediately turn on Kiyoko.  She wasn’t planning on saying anything, she hadn’t originally asked to say anything – her dislike for public speaking combined with her lack of conviction that she had anything meaningful to contribute caused her to shake her head when Daichi originally asked – but now, after hearing the other third-years, she has to say at least something.  She _has_ to.

And so she stands, faces her team, and takes a deep breath.

“I became the manager of this team when I was a first-year,” she begins.  “I thought joining a club would help make my resume more impressive.  But this team – this sport, and you guys – is so much more than just an entry on my resume.  I’ve learned a lot from each and every one of you, about how to be a good teammate and a good friend – and a good person.  You’ve taught me that I can be more than I believe – jump higher and shout louder and try harder – and I hope that’s a lesson I carry with me for the rest of my life.  It’s been such an honor to watch you get better, and watch Karasuno grow from a fallen champion to one of the best teams in the prefecture.  If any of you don’t play volleyball after you leave Karasuno, I hope you just remember how it feels to be on this team.  How it feels to stand on the court, and work together, and ...”

It’s strange, this baring of her heart to her team.  She’s never said this much to any of them, outside of tutoring or describing volleyball plays – and it should be terrifying, should be nerve-wracking, but she trusts them.  This speech is only a fall through the air from an impossibly high building if her team is the net that catches her.

Kiyoko clenches her fist and lets her tears fall unchecked.  “Do your best tomorrow!” she shouts.

And her team _roars._   That’s honestly the only word for it – for the rush of sound that surrounds her as the boys holler and whistle and applaud.  They’re on their feet within seconds, it seems – and first Suga is hugging her, then Yachi, then Tanaka and Nishinoya together, and then her whole team is _there,_ pulling her close and giving her their warmth and –

It doesn’t matter if they win or lose tomorrow.  Not in the long run.  Because she will have had _this._

* * *

In the spring of her second year in college, Kiyoko sits at a picnic table in the middle of her college’s green, textbooks and notebooks spread around her like a crowd of admirers.

She’s halfway through taking notes on a particular page of her biology book when she notices her phone is vibrating.  She checks the caller ID, hits answer, and holds it up to her ear.

“Hey, Yachi,” she says.  “What’s up?”

“Kiyoko-san, thank goodness you picked up!” Yachi exclaims, her voice enthusiastic as ever despite being shot through with static.  “I can’t find the box of uniforms, I looked _everywhere_ in the supply closet, and we definitely need a couple because we have more new first-years than ever, it must be a new record or something –”

Before she completely runs out of breath, Kiyoko interrupts with, “Did you look in the very back of the closet on the right side, for a big cardboard box with a black label?”

“Back of the closet,” Yachi repeats.  She sounds slightly muffled, as though her reception is getting worse.  “Right side.  Big cardboard box.  Black – aha!”

There are shuffling noises, a few grunts, and one loud shout that has to be Hinata, and then Yachi says, her voice clearer again, “I got it!  Thanks so much, Kiyoko-san.  Okay, I’ve gotta go, we’re –”

“Wait.  Yachi.”  Kiyoko has at least two hours of homework left, and she should probably get back to it, but first, there’s something she has to know.

“Yeah?” Yachi asks.

“How is ... How’s my team?  Is everything going okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” Yachi answers – quickly and easily, so she can only be telling the truth.  “We’re just fine.  Yamaguchi’s going to make a great captain, and Shoyou’s so excited he can finally be the ace, and there are just so many first-years, you should see all of them.  Oh, wait, Tsukkishima’s trying to scare them by telling them horror stories of what Kageyama does when spikers miss his tosses – I’d love to talk more, but I really should go.  Come visit soon!”

And with that, she hangs up.  Kiyoko lowers her phone slowly, turns it over in her hands, and puts it back on the picnic table.

 _We’re just fine,_ she repeats to herself.  _Just fine._

She tilts her face up to the sky, and for a moment, she can almost imagine a flock of crows soaring far above her.  A flock of crows – sleek, black, and glorious, with no chance of ever falling.

> **MOST SECRET**  
>  perhaps you dreamed  
>  the maps.  perhaps you  
>  burned them.  Anyway  
>  they’re not here.
> 
> And north is everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> if you really liked this fic, you should probably join the [haikyuu!! girls defense squad.](http://dadmaxfurymom.tumblr.com/post/127270913700/thats-right-friends-i-am-creating-a-network) for the brave and true of heart, applications are always open.


End file.
